A couple of years ago (before I arrived) our church bought some computers from someone who apparently had installed illegal copies of software which the church paid full price for.

Mind you: they worked fine. They just were not licensed properly. They had been paid for, but the person who had done the installation had apparently just pocketed the money (and had since moved on and no one knew where).

So we did the responsible thing: we bought new licenses through Microsoft’s Open Charity licensing via CDW for Office 2003. We only needed 3 copies, but in order to qualify for their Open Charity License we had to buy at least 5. (Because what most charities need more is to spend more money than they really have to.) It cost us close to $400 — including the actual install CDs, sold separately from the licenses to use them. How much are CDs, you ask? About $1 each. Oh, except these. These were closer to $30. Apparently Microsoft doesn’t have a Sam’s Club membership.

At the time my computer was a Powerbook G4 running Mac OS X, so I wasn’t using my license (meaning that we really only needed 2 copies, now that I think about it).

My main computer now is a MacBook, which runs both Mac OS X and Windows XP.

“Hey!” I think to myself, “How great, I can finally use one of those licenses that we bought.” It’ll be handy for those 3-4 times a year when someone sends me a Publisher file (yes, I know, I need better friends).

Except of course I couldn’t find the 25-character Product Key for Office 2003.

“No problem!” I thought. I’ll just contact the person we bought it from at CDW and she’ll be able to send it to us.

What she sent was an “Authorization Number” which is a 15-character string, and a “License Number” which is 8 characters.

Ok…. Now what? A little Googling later and I discover a phone number I have to call to turn my Authorization Number into a Product Key.

I wondered if anyone would be there at 11pm Eastern Time, but to my surprise, someone was. He even spoke something resembling English. Happy days are here again!

Or not.

The next and bigger surprise was that my “Authorization Number” has “expired as of September 2006.” He went on to say that I should contact the vendor “to get a new Authorization Number.”

Now it’s not clear to me what this means. Do we have to pay to get a new Authorization Number? CDW’s offices are currently closed, so I’ll have to wait until at least tomorrow to find out.

Here is what I do know:

1) There are people out there using pirated versions of Office more easily than paying customers. When I voiced my frustration to the Microsoft employee who answered the phone, he just repeated in a loud and seemingly irritated voice that the Authorization Numbers are only good for two years. I asked “Why?” and he said (essentially) “Because.” Oh, thanks, that’s much more clear then. I didn’t realize it was such a good reason.

2) This process has made me doubt whether I would ever recommend Volume Licensing to another church or any charity. Software is expensive enough, but software that expires is 100% unacceptable.

3) I’m downloading OpenOffice.org right now. It may not be pretty, but it works, it’s free, and it’s available.

Unlike the $400 software we bought.

Hey, thanks Microsoft. Glad to know that we can look forward to more restrictions like this in every future version of Office and Windows.

(Update 2007-06-27 @ 5:56 PM: Spoke with my CDW rep who said that Microsoft still should have been willing/able to give me the Product Key and the licenses themselves do not expire. She’s still trying to track down how to proceed from their end since Microsoft is being such a giant putz about this.

Update @ 6:19 PM: My CDW rep emailed me a new authorization number and I called Microsoft and finally, several days later, have a Product Key.)